Crime Control, Prevention and Punishment

Social and Community Crime Prevention

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Social and Community Crime Prevention

- Left Realists and other critical criminologists such as Marxists argue that both SCP (Situational Crime Prevention) and ECP (Environmental Crime Prevention) are doomed to failure because they are treating the symptoms rather than the social disease of crime.

- They argue that politicians need to address the economic and social conditions - poverty, unemployment, poor housing, poor education, low pay and radical discrimination - that bring about the risk conditions for crime, particularly among the young and some ethnic minority groups.

- Left Realists argue that urban crime is a rational response to a lack of legitimate opporunities and the powerlessness that deprived groups feel in terms of improving their situation.

- Left Realists also argue that economic and social reform programmes need to be administered by governments if crime is to be seriously reduced in inner-city areas and on sink council estates. These policies should include:

1. Educational programmes aimed at improving educational success in inner-city comprehensivesand reducing both exclusion and the number of 16-year-olds leaving school with no qualifications.

2. Minimum pay legislaion to ensure that people are paid a fair wage so that they are not tempted to become welfare-dependent

3, A reduction in wealth and income inequalities, perhaps through taxation.